Whatever warm feelings one may have had about Patrick Stewart and his statements yesterday -- THIS just brings all the despair back even more.

In a stunning decision made worse by the length of time it took to be handed down, the Supreme Court of El Salvador gave a young woman a death sentence on Wednesday by denying “permission” for an abortion needed to save her life.
Beatriz (a pseudonym) is now 24 weeks into an extremely high-risk pregnancy, complicated by a severe form of lupus, an autoimmune disease, hypertension, and renal (kidney) failure. Moreover, her pregnancy is not viable. The fetus she is carrying is anencephalic—it does not and will never have a fully formed brain—and can not survive more than a few hours after childbirth, if it survives at all.

Two deaths apparently more awesome than one, as long as a woman is involved -- ugh!

But this is the kind of decision many right-wingers in this country would applaud.
There has been an appeal made to Pope Francis to try and intervene.

As Digby notes, you know it's bad when you are asking the the Pope to intervene -- given the Vatican's position on the subject.

For a guy who never yet met a war he didn't want to either create or become entwined with John McCain sure trusts his judgment (along again, naturally)

U.S. Senator John McCain said on Wednesday, two days after meeting with rebels in Syria, that he is confident the United States can send weapons to fighters in Syria without the risk they will fall into the wrong hands.
"We can identify who these people are. We can help the right people," McCain said

Thursday, May 30, 2013

As the latest Republican to be praised for doing the king of things they ripped Nancy Pelosi for, John McCain expands upon his tremendous track record:

U.S. Senator John McCain said on Wednesday, two days after meeting with rebels in Syria, that he is confident the United States can send weapons to fighters in Syria without the risk they will fall into the wrong hands.

A trial date has been set in an Iowa lawsuit alleging that Rep.
Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., stole and misused an e-mail distribution list
maintained by an Iowa home school group during her failed 2012
presidential campaign.

This morning, the seven-day trial in Heki v. Bachmann was scheduled for May 14, 2014, court records show.

After years of trying to discipline him, the leaders of al-Qaida's
North African branch sent one final letter to their most difficult
employee. In page after scathing page, they described how he didn't
answer his phone when they called, failed to turn in his expense
reports, ignored meetings and refused time and again to carry out
orders.

This is something right out of Lawrence Wright's excellent "The Looming Tower" there is an efficient mundane quality to Al Qaeda that isn't discussed much.

As many of you know there is a never ending amount of bashing of the US Postal Service by members of Congress, especially Republicans (but a number of Democrats too). Oh, it's so inefficient, oh it's terrible, it should be privatized.
Even though these same indviduals proclaim themselves lovers of the Constitution and the Postal Service just happens to be the only governmental service actually mentioned in the Constitution. It was never intended to be a "for profit" entity, but a service the founders believed the government owed the people.
Well, to hell with that I guess:

...one of the Postal Service's biggest problems has nothing to do with the mail. Its finances sank in fiscal year 2007, shortly after Congress passed the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. The act, among other things, required the Postal Service to start pre-funding the health benefits of future retirees 50 years in advance at a rate of about $5.6 billion a year. The year after the act was passed, Postal Service ledgers showed a loss of $5.1 billion.

Only the Defense Department is otherwise required to do this...and as we know, they are not required to operate at a profit, the more they spend the better it appears.
There's actually a bill to undo this unbelievably stupid law.
But don't count on it, it is too good a fallacy to not be beaten by the Conservatives who made it that way.
[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Pro Tips for rising young pols:a) bad form to smoke crack; b) very bad
form to be videotaped smoking crack; c) extraordinarily bad form to be
videotaped smoking crack next to a guy who subsequently gets iced on a
downtown street. I am going to post this now before Rob Ford hijacks an
airliner and demands to be flown to a Singapore brothel.

"The mental cruelty that we as a team have suffered is unbearable,"
the players wrote. Specifically, they said the coach had called them
"whores, alcoholics and learning disabled."

In blunt terms, the players wrote, "It has been unanimously decided that this is an irreconcilable issue."

It is nice to know that so many positions of "authority" we have in created or allowed in society (politicians, cops, clerics, and coaches [the latter the only one invented in the last century]) are inhabited by complete sociopaths.

That has really worked out well.

Obviously all power should be invested in bloggers, especially the less than moderately popular ones.

Cue Lee Greenwood -- and if you disagree you are not supporting the troops!

The refusal by about half the states to expand Medicaid will leave millions of poor people ineligible for government-subsidized health insurance under President Obama’s health care law even as many others with higher incomes receive federal subsidies to buy insurance.

Starting next month, the administration and its allies will conduct a
nationwide campaign encouraging Americans to take advantage of new
high-quality affordable insurance options. But those options will be
unavailable to some of the neediest people in states like Texas,
Florida, Kansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia, which are
refusing to expand Medicaid.

More than half of all people without health insurance live in states that are not planning to expand Medicaid.

Monday, May 27, 2013

The House Homeland Security Committee chairman said on Sunday that he
was “offended” that President Obama considered moral questions about
U.S. counterterrorism policy in his major speech on national security last week.

“That’s what bothered me about the president’s speech,” Rep. Peter
King (R-NY) said on ABC’s This Week, was “the moral anguishing he was
going through.” When asked whether the Obama administration should
change its drone policy, King replied, “If it does change it shouldn’t
change for moral reasons”

Yes, killing a person or persons should NEVER involve a moral dilemma.

A gunman randomly firing from his pickup truck killed one person and
wounded five, including the sheriff of Concho County, Texas, on Sunday
before the suspect was killed in a shootout with law enforcement,
officials said.

Authorities recovered an assault rifle, a handgun and hundreds of
rounds of ammunition from the suspect, who was said to be 23 years old
and from North Carolina. The name was withheld pending notification of
relatives, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement.

I'm betting this record probably falls again over the extended July 4th weekend -- in celebration, of course, of the only Amendment many Americans think they know but have never actually read.

The Transportation Security Administration found a record 65 guns in carry-on luggage last week, just a few weeks after setting a record of 50 firearms found.
...
In addition, TSA agents found 12 stun guns, inert grenades, realistic replicas, razor blades, ammunition, and "a lot of sharp pointy things."

Sunday, May 26, 2013

My only regret about the Rob Ford, the crack smokin' right-wing Mayor, is that he is not American, but merely North American.

How could this guy not be Mayor of a city in the good ol' U.S. of A?

Looking at this from the outside, setting aside that it’s problematic to
have a serving mayor caught on tape doing drugs, I’ve had to ask: how
does the sitting Mayor end up carousing with Somali crack dealers and
smoking crack? Well, we may have an answer. The Globe and Mail has
just published a lengthy, very lengthy look at the Ford family. And basically all Ford’s siblings have substantial past ties to the drug trade.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

FoxNews, which of course is portraying the story of James Rosen as a billion times worse than McCarthy (ironic as the number should be infinity as they love Joe McCarthy) stories continued...

During her syndicated radio show this afternoon, conservative columnist Andrea Tantaros reacted to the Justice Department’s snooping on the Associated Press and Fox reporter James Rosen by decrying “Obama’s America” and telling her audience if they see any Obama voters, “punch them in the face.”

It's been hard to really figure out which side of the James Rosen story to cheer against. The government's use of police powers possibly chilling the First Amendment or FoxNews never ending ability to be assholes.

The Republicans who control Nashville rushed through committee a measure to create a state charter school authorizer — a centralized government body that strips school decisions away from local boards.
Charter schools approved by the state charger authorizer would have to be funded by local taxpayers whether there was money available or not.

John DeBerry, Tennesse State Representative:
‘I think all of us on both sides of the aisle realize that Charter schools allowed us to go in a different direction and to use creativity in the way that we educate.

Beth Harwell, Tennessee Speaker of the House:
‘ It was wonderful to me that our first and most important priority was the quality of the charter schools that we would have in the state of Tennessee. I think I’m most impressed that we really achieved bipartisan support; both Democrats and Republicans see the good that can come from charter schools in this state.’

May 2013:
Yeah, about "that good", how are Tennessee Charter Schools achieving that good?

Students are leaving in large numbers at a particularly important time of the school year, and the consequences may have an impact on test scores.
Charter schools are literally built on the idea that they will outperform public, zoned schools. They are popular because they promise and deliver results, but some new numbers are raising big questions about charter schools.

One of the first things a visitor sees when stepping into Kipp Academy is a graph that shows how Kipp is outperforming Metro schools in every subject.

However, Kipp Academy is also one of the leaders in another stat that is not something to crow about.
When it comes to the net loss of students this year, charter schools are the top eight losers of students.

In short Charter schools are "outperforming" public schools on test scores by dumping their underperforming students on public schools just as testing starts.
And then crowing about their awesome results.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

A day after Sergio Garcia caused a major row by making a racially insensitive joke about Tiger Woods, European Tour chief executive George O'Grady used the dated and racially insensitive term "colored" while saying that the European Tour accepts Garcia's apology for saying that he'd serve Woods "fried chicken" for dinner at the U.S. Open.

The president should announce that he has told the Justice Department to appoint an independent investigator with bulldog instincts and bipartisan credibility. The list of candidates could start with Kenneth Starr, who chased down the scandals, real and imagined, of the Clinton presidency.

I wonder how many blue garments Bill Keller stained just thinking about that?

The average CEO salary broke records in 2011 at $9.6 million — and now, that record high has been topped by 2012 salaries, which averaged out to $9.7 million. Health care and media CEOs enjoyed the highest pay, while utility CEOs had the lowest at $7.5 million. Sixty percent of CEOs got a raise last year.

The State of Arizona and it's Republican dominated government have tried to stop same-sex marriage, but on an even more local level they are being thwarted:

In a state with a conservative edge, Bisbee, population 5,600, in early April became the first municipality in Arizona to legalize same-sex civil unions. On Tuesday, after threats by Arizona's attorney general to sue Bisbee for exceeding its powers and interfering in state affairs, town leaders tweaked the ordinance to omit references to "spouses" and "marriage" and to refer to its civil unions only as contractual agreements.

But the intent is still the same – to lay down a marker that, inside these city limits, a red state becomes a blue oasis on the issue of gay rights. And Bisbee is not alone.

And it will take a great illogical leap for Jan Brewer and company to claim gays and lesbians cannot enter into contracts.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Blitzer said to Rebecca Vitsmun, who escaped from her house with her 19-month-old son right before the twister tore through it. "You've gotta thank the Lord, right? Do you thank the Lord for that split-second decision?"
Vitsmun hesitates for a moment and smiles. "I -- I'm actually an atheist," she said, laughing off the awkward moment.

Yes, who doesn't want to "thank the Lord" right after -- using that logic -- he sent an F5 tornado to try and kill you and your neighbors? Thanks, God!

I do not really wish to take too strong a stance pro or con about the claims -- and perhaps claim is too weak -- that the Cincinnati Office of the IRS looked into tax exemption claims from various "Tea Party" groups than others.

But one does have to look at few logical reasons this should probably have occurred in any case. There are two things true about such groups -- One, they HATE government; Two they REALLY HATE paying taxes.

The possibility of such a group being a bit shady giving these motivations, I'm going to say a bit higher than most. It is right in their DNA.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

"Everyone has a weakness, but exceptional is the person with no strengths"

And I feel exceptional!

I do have one question for those of you who run or walk regularly for exercise. I've been walking 8 to 10 miles a day now for about two and a half months (one of the reasons my posts have been cut down).

Does there ever come a time -- especially for middle-aged people like me -- when something does not hurt?

I mean I've had shin splints; blisters harden into callouses and then gotten blisters on the callouses; the pounding my lower back takes has caused a burning sensation in my upper leg (commonly known as "thigh") and now my right ankle hurts.

None of these is debilitating and I keep on keeping on -- and so far I've lost quite a bit of weight (seven inches plus off my belt size -- which I'm calling the "blogger 35" pounds), but does it ever really end -- do you have some time period when there isn't a new ache or pain?

Oklahoma was hit hard by a series of tornado outbreaks. By far the worst appears to be at a school in Moore, Oklahoma. Tornadoes this time of year in that part of the country are not exactly unheard of, but the frequency and intensity of this outbreak is disturbing.

Oklahoma's Senators have a good track record of gumming up the works for disaster relief whenever it is needed.

Late last year, Inhofe and Coburn both backed a plan to slash disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. In a December press release, Coburn complained that the Sandy Relief bill contained "wasteful spending," and identified a series of items he objected to, including "$12.9 billion for future disaster mitigation activities and studies."

Coburn spokesman John Hart on Monday evening confirmed that the senator will seek to ensure that any additional funding for tornado disaster relief in Oklahoma be offset by cuts to federal spending elsewhere in the budget.

Yes, they are still pulling victims from the debris and Tom Coburn's mind is on making sure other poor souls get harmed too. But he'll get credit for consistency, without mentioning the consistency is for being horrible.

Monday, May 20, 2013

In the sixties and seventies environmental regulations succeeded in substantially reducing lead exposure, particularly in the ways it was commonly spread through paint and gasoline emissions.
The beneficial result, amongst other things, is the apparently correlation between reducing lead exposure and reducing violent crimes.
It is quite apparent and not solely due to the reduced birth rate post-baby boom.

Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.
As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.
But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune.
Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.
But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."
The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.
At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.

Over the last decade, former Navy
Secretary Richard J. Danzig, a prominent lawyer, presidential advisor
and biowarfare consultant to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland
Security, has urged the government to counter what he called a major
threat to national security.

Terrorists, he warned, could easily engineer a devastating killer germ: a form of anthrax resistant to common antibiotics.

U.S. intelligence agencies have never established that any nation or
terrorist group has made such a weapon, and biodefense scientists say
doing so would be very difficult.

Nevermind, can you use fear to make a profit?

Oh yes:

Danzig did this while serving as a director of a biotech startup that
won $334 million in federal contracts to supply just such a drug, a Los
Angeles Times investigation found.

Meanwhile, let's cut more food stamps and Medicare.

Oh, and based on the above, you might think Danzig was a "loyal Bushie".

Sunday, May 19, 2013

His latest book, “Rumsfeld’s Rules” suggests he still has lessons to share after a lifetime in politics and business.

And the rules?

1. It’s easier to get into something than it is to get out.

Yeah, way to LIVE that one Donny, boy.

2. “I’ve been mistaken so many times, I don’t even blush for it anymore.” – Napoleon

Nope, you just take advances to publish a book of tragic and laughable self-parody.3. Monitor progress through metrics.

"I am shitfaced Nate Silver!"
This is literally a quote -- and bear in mind, points one and two that proceed this:

“I think that history over time will probably be a better
judge than you or I, but I’ve been struck by the amount of criticism
that the Bush administration has received and President Bush personally
and the attempts to assign blame to him and I think it’s probably not
going to sort out that way.”

He says President Bush’s decision to enter Iraq is “something that over time will be better understood.”

In a letter to members of Congress, which was obtained by NBC News,
Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation
(which recently found itself in hot water over the racial IQ theories
of the co-author of their widely panned immigration reform study, Jason
Richwine, who resigned from the think tank last Friday),
urged Republicans on Capitol Hill not to govern, and instead, to focus
on the would-be “scandals” plaguing the Obama administration.

Radio host Pete Santilli made shocking remarks about former Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton, claiming she should be "shot" for being
"involved in the killings of American troops."

Santilli hosts a show on his website, but says
he's "ready to take my show to national syndication; that is, of
course, if the FCC regulated AM/FM radio stations can handle my truth
& honesty.""Hillary Clinton needs to be convicted. She needs to be tried, convicted and shot in the vagina," Santilli said, Right Wing Watch reports. "I want to pull the trigger."

...

Santilli also criticized Obama, saying he deserves the same punishment as Clinton.

"Barack Obama needs to be tried, convicted, and shot for crimes against the United States of America," Santilli said. "And if anybody has a problem with that, then you are an enemy of our state."

Earlier today, CBS News reported that at least two of the Benghazi e-mails that were leaked by Republicans last Friday were altered. The GOP leak of the altered Benghazi e-mails came five days before the White House released 100 pages of e-mail correspondence regarding the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

Wal-Mart Stores said it won’t accept an agreement “at this time” to
improve fire and building safety in Bangladesh that is supported by
labor monitoring groups and was signed by several retailers this week.

“The Earth has had many-times-higher levels of CO2 in the past,” said Marc Morano, former spokesman for Republican Senator James Inhofe and executive editor of Climate Depot,
a blog that posts articles skeptical of climate change. “Americans
should welcome the 400 parts-per-million threshold. This means that
plants are going to be happy, and this means that global-warming
fearmongers are going to be proven wrong.”

Marc Morano, the 21st Centuries Lysenko, here to encourage as much pollution as a smokestack can bellow.

For years, scientists have worried about the impact of climate change in
the invaluable Himalayan region. Recent research seems to confirm
worries that a warming world is melting one of Earth's most iconic, not
to mention tallest, summits: Mount Everest.

Of course, the elimination of glaciers in the Himalayas is no big deal -- they are only the predominant source of fresh water for about one in every four people in the world.

D Magazine on Tuesday published
a shockingly not safe for work voicemail from Dallas City Council
candidate Richard P. Sheridan who said that the publication had not done
enough to inform voters that his opponent was gay.

In the voicemail left over the weekend, Sheridan tells reporter Dan
Koller that he’s “extremely happy” that “Sodomite” Leland Burk lost to
Jennifer Staubach Gates.

“You know, you didn’t post the fact, communicate to voters that he’s
gay, and I think I did a pretty good job of communicating to voters,”
Sheridan, who only received 28 votes, opines. “You, sir, are cunt,
bitch, coward, Mr. Koller. Dan Koller is a cunt, bitch, coward. And I
don’t think you have one testicle, sir. You’re a sorry-ass, you’re a
disgrace to our city, you’re a propagandist to the Sodomites.

A whopping 41 percent of Republicans polled think the Obama
administration’s handling of Benghazi is the greatest scandal in U.S.
history. “One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is
the biggest political scandal in American history,” PPP adds, “is that
39% of them don’t actually know where it is. 10% think it’s in Egypt, 9%
in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North
Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess.”

The Internal Revenue Service, under pressure after admitting it targeted anti-tax Tea Party groups for scrutiny in recent years, also had its eye on at least three Democratic-leaning organizations seeking nonprofit status.
One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected.

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records
of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news
cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented
intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.

...

...the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone
lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The
exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period
is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where
phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government
and other matters.

And why exactly?

Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney
in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have
provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled
terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen
that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb
on an airplane bound for the United States.

If the U.S. had just dispatched a drone we'd have two constitutionally disturbing uses of power in one.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Half the jobs in the nation pay less than $34,000 a year, according to
the Economic Policy Institute. A quarter pay below the poverty line for a
family of four, less than $23,000 annually. Families that can send
another adult to work have done better, but single mothers (and fathers)
don’t have that option. Poverty among families with children headed by
single mothers exceeds 40 percent.

Wages for those who work on jobs in the bottom half have been stuck since 1973, increasing just 7 percent.

Only the already wealthy have seen their incomes grow generally...and they've grown A LOT!

Minnesota Congresswoman and former Republican presidential contender Michele Bachmann has been conspicuously silent since her nail-biter of a congressional re-election, but was back at her sound bite machine ways this week, calling 9/11 and the Benghazi consulate attacks “judgments from God.”

I think the only "judgment" that will ever be associated with Michele Bachman will be the one rendered over her use of campaign funds in Iowa.

It is unclear what sparked the shooting, which happened in the city's 7th Ward on Sunday afternoon. Police say two or three suspects were seen fleeing the area.
Police said that, as well as the 12 people with gunshot wounds, one person was injured in the ensuing panic.

(Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said he may consider leaving the bank where he has held the top post since 2005, if shareholders vote to split his duties, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
Shareholders will vote later this month at an annual meeting in Tampa, Florida, on a non-binding proposal to separate the chairman and chief executive roles after a more than $6 billion trading loss last year raised questions about risk oversight.

Wheee! The Heritage Foundation is engaged in frantic damage control;
not only did its big anti-immigration-reform report turn out to be a
steaming heap of, um, bad research, but one of the co-authors turns out
to have a serious white supremacist background.

It would be a terrible thing to happen to a serious think tank. But
Heritage isn’t a serious think tank, which means that all of this is
just a bit of overdue poetic justice.

...

The truth is that Heritage has never been in the business of doing
economic analysis; it’s just a propaganda agency posing as a think tank.
And this time it finally caught up with them.

Of course, proving the point, it does appear that the Heritage Foundation has one fan.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Boehner defended the bill in the Bloomberg interview. “Listen,” he said.
“Those who have loaned us money, like in any proceeding, if you will,
court proceeding, the bondholders usually get paid first. Same thing
here.”

...trade site Radio Ink quoted
a "very high ranking Cumulus official," who said, "Forty-eight of the
top 50 network advertisers have 'excluded Rush and Hannity' orders.
Every major national ad agency has the same dictate." This statement was
in line with other reports about the ad market's hostility towards Limbaugh.

Rush is well on his way to dying old, bitter and probably alone -- as well remembered by history as Father Coughlin.

Yesterday I posted about how former Senator, freak, and current Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint managed to put out a factually laughable immigrant bashing report put together in large part by a bigot.

The Heritage Foundation's Jason Richwine, who co-authored the think tank's study claiming immigration reform will cost trillions of dollars, contributed two articles to a "nationalist" website about Hispanic incarceration rates, Yahoo News reported Thursday.
Richwine came under fire after the Washington Post reported Wednesday that his Harvard dissertation argued Hispanics have lower IQs than Caucasians and that the United States should screen immigrants based on their IQ scores.

A record seven-in-ten (69%) Hispanic high school graduates in the class of 2012 enrolled in college that fall, two percentage points higher than the rate (67%) among their white counterparts, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

James DeMint resigned from the Senate (as a representative of South Carolina) some months ago -- so he could get a big pay raise to be the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
What better place to be rewarded with seven-figures at a think tank, when this is your big thought:

DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn't be in the classroom.

Classy.
Naturally as head of the Heritage Foundation, DeMint used his first big project -- critiquing immigration reform to keep those big "ideas" flowing.

One of the co-authors of the Heritage Study claming immigration reform would add $6.3 trillion to the deficit, Jason Richwine, advocated barring immigrants from entering the United States based on their IQ in 2009.

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

A 3-year-old boy in Tampa, Florida fatally shot himself with his uncle's gun on Tuesday evening, the Tampa Bay Times reports. The boy found the 9mm gun in a backpack in the bedroom he shared with his 29-year-old uncle, Jeffrey D. Walker, and accidentally discharged it.
Walker was arrested Tuesday and charged with culpable negligence. He held a concealed weapons permit, authorities told the Tampa Bay Times.
The boy's parents, Jasmine Bell, 21, and Trentin Speights, 22, were in their bedroom at the time of the shooting.
This comes a day after a 13-year-old fatally shot his 6-year-old sister, also in Florida.

No, no, no. Bro, I'm a Christian, an American, and just like you.
We bleed same blood, put our pants on the same way. It's just that you
got to put that - being a coward, and I don't want to get in nobody's
business. You got to put that away for a minute.
[...]

I tell you what you do, give [the reward] to them. Because if folks
been following this case since last night, you been following me since
last night, you know I got a job anyway. Just went picked it up,
paycheck. What that address say? [...] 2203 Seymour. Where are them
girls living? Right next door to this paycheck. So yes, take that
reward and give it to—that little girl[.]

Extended unemployment benefits Congress put in place at the outset of
the Great Recession didn't discourage people from taking jobs,
according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. ..."It did not reduce the job finding rate," Farber told HuffPost. He
added the benefits probably helped the economy, however, not to mention
the individual people who otherwise might have had no income. "These are
people who spend the money you give them."

He'll be 3/4ths the size of Huckabee by the time he starts visiting Iowa in sixteen months.

He says he did it for his wife and kids, not for his political
ambitions. But either way, the political world awoke to news Tuesday
that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had secretly undergone stomach surgery to lose weight.

Good for him for trying to do something about his weight, but I'm sure it isn't just because he wants to buy suits off the rack.

I anxiously await the Heritage Foundation's study on the economic benefits of slavery...to the slave.

On Monday, the Heritage Foundation published a widely pannedstudy
arguing that comprehensive immigration reform that allows undocumented
immigrants to earn citizenship would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, as
the population will take advantage of an array of government programs,
including, Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits, Medicaid,
public education, and population-based services like police and parks.

But the study, which comes out under the leadership of conservative former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), is a sharp departure from a “Backgrounder”
the Foundation published in 2006. Then, Heritage noted that “worker
migration is a net plus economically” and warned lawmakers against
succumbing to “a lopsided, ideological approach that focuses exclusively
on border security while ignore migrant workers (or vice versa) is
bound to fail.”

"The evidence Colin Powell presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise."

In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic.

Richard Cohen is still paid a great deal of money by the same money-losing entity to dispense foreign policy advice like this:

The Syrian situation is spinning out of control. The longer Obama waits to intervene, the harder it becomes to do so. More than 70,000 people have been killed. More than a million Syrians have become refugees. The suffering is vast and the consequences of inaction are catastrophic. The White House is coldly wrong. Obama didn’t misspeak when he said red line. He misspoke when he later suggested that he didn’t mean it.

Self-proclaimed Washington Post "liberal" columnist Richard Cohen has yet to meet a war he wasn't willing to have some other American fight.

Monday, May 06, 2013

U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties
of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have
used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on
Sunday.

Over
the past five years, David Stein has made a name for himself as a
leader for Hollywood's conservatives. As an operator for the popular
website Republican Party Animals, he hosted right-wing congressmen and
celebrities at parties, and he was a regular on conservative talk shows.
But it turns out Stein had a bizarre secret.

Two weeks ago, Stein was unmasked as David Cole,
an infamous Holocaust revisionist who questioned the existence of Nazi
gas chambers. Throughout the 90s, he was a guest on talk shows like The Phil Donahue Show and The Montel Williams Show, and profiled by the likes of 48 Hours and 60 Minutes.

I'm sure he'd be the first in line to blame FDR/Clinton/Obama with killing Breitbart too.

Gun owners should store a gun in their kids’ room, according to a ‘Home
Defense Concepts’ seminar offered at the National Rifle Association’s
Annual Meeting, comments that came just days after the fatal shooting of a two-year-old at the hands of her five-year-old brother.

The eurozone's recession will be even deeper than previously feared this year, the European commission has warned, as it slashed its outlook for crisis-stricken Cyprus and downgraded the prospects of the bloc's biggest economies.

The
EU's executive arm now expects GDP in the single currency zone to
shrink by 0.4% in 2013, a sharper decline than its previous forecast for
a drop of 0.3%. The recovery pencilled in for 2014 will also be slower
than expected and the unemployment crisis in the eurozone will persist,
the commission said in its spring forecasts.

No matter how much they want to say otherwise, it's pretty clear that that gay guy, John Maynard Keynes, was absolutely right in how important spending is to job growth.

Sunday, May 05, 2013

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere are on the
cusp of reaching 400 parts per million for the first time in 3 million
years.

The daily CO2 level, measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in
Hawaii, was 399.72 parts per million last Thursday, and a few hourly
readings had risen to more than 400 parts per million.''I wish it weren't true but it looks like the world is going
to blow through the 400 ppm level without losing a beat,'' said Ralph
Keeling, a geologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the
US, which operates the Hawaiian observatory.

''At this pace we'll hit 450 ppm within a few decades.''

The 450 ppm level is considered to be the point at which the
world has a 50 per cent chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.
Any higher and the odds of avoiding searing temperature rises of 4 or 5
degrees by the end of the century become prohibitively risky.

Of course, with the exception of cyborg-Cheney all of our political leadership will have died by then...and unlike many of us, not from starvation.

Authorities released terrifying
footage of an armed madman shooting up a patrol car in Middlefield,
Ohio, turning a routine traffic stop into a combat zone.Local
police told reporters on Friday that they still have no clue why James
Gilkerson fired 37 shots at two officers using an AK-47 style assault
rifle after the officers pulled him over on March 10, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. ‘He
got of the vehicle, intending to kill my officers. We don't know why he
did it,’ said Middlefield Police Chief Arnold Stanko.

The regulator of U.S. power markets appears likely to pursue manipulation charges against JPMorgan Chase & Co , analysts said, after a New York Times report on the agency's document that seemed to lay out its case.

The Times said on Friday it reviewed a confidential, 70-page
government document that the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC) sent to JPMorgan in March, which alleged the bank manipulated the
power market in California and Michigan in 2010 and 2011.

FERC investigators found JPMorgan devised "manipulative schemes" that
transformed "money-losing power plants into powerful profit centers,"
the Times reported, citing the document. It said the bank has until
mid-May to respond.

I can see where the gun-lobby is headed. We're allowing same-sex marriage.
Next year, gun-nuts; they will demand, must be allowed to marry their guns.
You know they want to.
And why not, as long as they are both loaded -- and you know they are.

I imagine, if we tried, we could easily have a half-dozen people sit around a table and when the question posed is, "If you could create the perfect stereotype for the new President of the NRA, what would he (because it's gonna be a guy) be like?"

And after about 30 seconds we would probably come up with this:

1. He would be from the South.
2. He would be certain that Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton tried to get the U.N. to take guns away.
3. He would refer to the Civil War as "The War of Northern Agression".
4. He'd call Obama a "Euro-peen" Socialist (to which I'd respond, "if only!")
5. He would look like Yosemite Sam.

Thursday, May 02, 2013

1. Despite my pseudonym, I'm not Turkish.
2. I get up real early, because I have no life.
3. I do love a nicely shaped foot.
4. And the dream of one day seeing Howard Kurtz and yelling, "Fuck you, Howie. Fuck you!"

The Daily Caller discounted the
experiences of some victims of gun violence who have promoted stronger
gun laws by claiming they suffer from "hoplophobia," a fake
psychological disorder defined by the gun rights movement as "the morbid
fear of guns."

Mohamed A. Salim, a Muslim cabdriver who served in Iraq and at the
U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, claims a passenger he picked
up last week in Northern Virginia attacked him for being a "jihadist,"
comparing him to the two men that allegedly carried out the Boston
marathon bombing.

“Because I’m a Muslim, he treated me like a piece of trash,” said
Salim, who also happens to be an Army reservist, according to the Washington Post. “I love this country. I didn’t deserve this.”

Salim, a 39-year-old man from Great Falls, recorded an 11-minute video
which he claims shows Ed Dahlberg spouting obscenities ahead of the
alleged assault. Authorities have charged Dahlberg with misdemeanor
assault.

“If you’re a Muslim, you’re a [expletive] jihadist,” the passenger says. “You are just as bad as the rest of them.”
The video ends with a blur of motion and audio of Salim asking, “Why are you punching me? Sir, why are you punching me?”
The passenger replies: “You’re a [expletive] Muslim.”

In a shocking example of Republican indifference to the problems
Americans face, the Republican party is distributing a fundraising video
today that mocks the background check defeat in Congress recently,
using a photo of the grieving mother of a dead Sandy Hook Elementary 6
year old boy in order to brag about the legislation’s defeat.

It's like they took their dickishness and said, turn up the dicks to maximum.

Eighteen percent of Democrats said an armed revolt “might be necessary,”
as compared to 27 percent of independents and 44 percent of
Republicans. Support levels were similar among males and females but
higher among less educated voters.

According to the payroll giant's latest survey, private employers added 119,000 jobs in April. Economists had been expecting a gain of around 150,000. ADP also cut its March employment figure to 131,000 from the 158,000 reported a month ago...

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, which helps compile the report, said: "Job growth appears to be slowing in response to very significant fiscal headwinds. Tax increases and government spending cuts are beginning to hit the job market. Job growth has slowed across all industries and most significantly among companies that employ between 20 and 499 workers."

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

I can see this John Galtian sort of thing growing in this country, little-by-little until something like this happens.

...perhaps no one wielded power more brazenly
than Sohel Rana. He traveled by motorcycle, as untouchable as a mafia
don, trailed by his own biker gang. Local officials and the Bangladeshi
news media say he was involved in illegal drugs and guns, but he also
had a building, Rana Plaza, that housed five factories.

Upstairs, workers earned as little as $40 a month making clothes for
retailers like J. C. Penney. Downstairs, Mr. Rana hosted local
politicians, playing pool, drinking and, the officials say, indulging in
drugs.

Now Mr. Rana, 35, is under arrest, the most reviled man in Bangladesh
after the horrific collapse of Rana Plaza last week left nearly 400
people dead, with many others still missing. On Tuesday, a top
Bangladeshi court seized his assets, as the public bayed for his
execution, especially as it appears that the tragedy could have been
averted if the frantic warnings of an engineer who examined the building
the day before had been heeded.

But if Mr. Rana has been vilified, he is partly a creation of the
garment era in Bangladesh, during which global businesses have arrived
in search of cheap labor to keep profits high and costs low. Directly or
indirectly, international brands are now sometimes interlinked with men
like Mr. Rana, and placed at risk by them.

And then watch some other outrage end up get the populace as a whole shut out while the perp gets their own talk show before running for Congress.